Logic of place and the form of cities
by
Augustin BERQUE
Abstract
The logic of place (basho no ronri) was a fundamental theme in the philosophy of Nishida Kitaro (1870-1945). It showed that worldhood (sekaisei) functions as a predicate (jutsugo). This can be understood more simply as follows: worldhood is instituted by the way in which we grasp (feel, understand, say, handle) the things which make our world. This conception was opposed to the modern Western way of conceiving of reality, which relies on a logic of the subject (shugo), or in other words on the principle of identity (A is A, A is not non-A).
Nishida's thought was deemed an "overcoming of modernity" (kindai no choukoku), but in fact it was only an overturning of the principle of identity, replacing it by a principle of identification or of metaphor (A becomes non-A). Nishida's error was to absolutize worldhood, as an absolute "basho" (place) based on a logic of the predicate ; whereas reality in fact combines the two logics.
What remains of Nishida's attempt was that he has clearly shown the nature of worldhood. His philosophy puts into light the fundamental logic which is at work in what has been called later, in Western thought, "the social construction of reality", a conception which gave rise to constructivism then to deconstructivism as in Derrida's philosophy. This trend of thought amounts to what I call "metabasism", inasmuch as, like Nishida's logic of place, it tends to absolutize human worldhood, thus disconnecting it from any base in the objective nature of things as it can be shown by modern science. Modern science indeed functions upon the reverse principle, that of identity (an object is what it is, independently from human existence).
The lecture intends to show the limits of both conceptions, focussing on architecture and on the present evolution of the form of cities. Modernity has reached its limit inasmuch as it produces a world of objects abstracted from human existence; but human existence in its turn has a base in the objective nature of things. This is to say that reality combines the principle of identity with a logic of place. Only on such grounds shall we be able to conceive more proper guidelines for architecture and city planning than those which were set by the modern movement then overturned by postmodernism.